Personal Reflections of UPI news photographer and editor Gary Haynes

Excerpted with permission from Picture This! The Inside Story of UPI Newspictures(c) 2006, Gary Haynes DOWNHOLD $$$ UPI staffers knew their company pinched pennies, and there were periodic rumors that paychecks might bounce. But there was news to cover and AP to beat, and nobody believed that a company with 223 bureaus worldwide, 2,000 fulltime employees, 5,000 nonstaff “stringers,” and 7,500 customers in 100 countries wasn’t making money. UPI, after all, was owned by a rich company, Scripps Howard, whose own newspapers depended upon the UPI report. (wash journalism review, 1983) All the staffers accepted that their company set new records for cheapness. Division picture managers and bureau managers would get regular “downhold” memos from their bosses. “Downhold” is cable shorthand for holding down expenses: don’t compromise news coverage but use materials wisely, limit long-distance calls, and entertain no clients or sources if there was a graceful way not to do so – or get them to pay. “I don’t want this to be interpreted as a panic letter,” a downhold letter to managers began in 1977. Bernie Caughey, superintendent of bureaus, warned that stringer invoices exceeding the monthly bureau stringer budget wouldn’t be paid. “A really good manager will sparkle in less than ideal circumstances,” Caughey concluded. He didn’t speculate on how sparkling UPI’s non-staff stringers might feel if they weren’t paid for their efforts. UPI was so notoriously stingy with supplies for picture bureau in “line” bureaus outside of New York that staff photographers shot sparingly, trying to make every frame of film count. If an assignment took only half of a 36-exposure roll, the photographer didn’t rewind the film. The camera was taken into the darkroom, where the exposed end of the roll was cut for processing. The frames remaining in the cassette were saved for another assignment. Trying to economize, almost every picture bureau manager at one time or another experimented with loading his own film. A bulk roll of Kodak Tri-X was good for about 18 rolls of 36-exposure film, saving about a third over what the same number of factory-load rolls would cost. But it was false economy and was always abandoned, because repeated re-use of film cassettes caused them to scratch film, ruining every picture. In 1961, I was manager of the Philadelphia newspictures bureau. Sounded impressive, but my “bureau” consisted of just me, a desk and a chair situated in a corner of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s photo department. Vice President Frank Tremaine visited from New York to kick the tires of his new manager and to ask if there was any expenses we could cut out. Other than photo supplies and the photo transmitter, I said, UPI owned nothing. The furniture and even the typewriter belonged to the Inquirer. UPI’s only recurring expense was a single phone line, with two extensions and a cutoff key, costing an extra $2 a month, which switched off the desk phone so nobody could pick it up and interrupt a photo being transmitted from the extension in the darkroom. A few weeks later New York said “cancel the key.” Several ruined transmissions later, the key was reinstalled. UPI had to pay $12 to have it reinstalled. Larry DeSantis remembers setting up coverage of a championship fight in Las Vegas, when Ernie Schwork determined that one position couldn’t be properly covered unless UPI could come up with a 600mm lens. Schwork called somebody, DeSantis recalls, and a brand new 600mm was delivered that afternoon. “How can we pay for it?” DeSantis asked. Schwork, nearly as creative with his expense accounts as with his camera, told Larry: “Don’t worry, they’ll never find it.” UPI had a commercial photo division called “ComPix” that occasionally asked the news staff to assist with difficult photo projects. Bill Lyon, Southern Division picture manager, volunteered for such a project, involving skydivers near Atlanta in a shoot for Eastman Kodak. He also volunteered me. During a rare day off from covering news, Bill and I, each in our own Cessna with a young pilot not old enough to shave, would picture a skydiver – with a new Kodak video camera attached to his helmet - jumping from my plane. I’d shoot the jump and Bill would follow him down. The right-hand door of my plane was removed to provide easy exit for the diver, and I was secured with nylon straps. The diver vanished in front of me and the pilot rolled sharp right, giving me an unobstructed view of the freefall and the added rush of hanging partially out of the plane myself, with just three nylon straps preventing my own freefall to sweet Georgia earth. Bill’s plane had gone into a power dive, the pilot having taken too seriously Bill’s instructions to “keep up” with the diver until the parachute opened. Back on the ground, Bill was an odd shade of green, and cursing. Then he threw up. He swore he would not – as in NEVER – put a foot back into any plane that was to fly us home. And NEVER again would he help Compix. Weeks later Bill swore anew after Compix phoned, thanking him for the help that saved the company “at least a thousand bucks” that would have been paid a freelancer. David Kennerly lost one shoe while covering celebrities affected by 1968 Los Angeles flooding. Actress Ann-Margret’s front yard, turned into a mudslide by nonstop rains, was moving down the driveway of her Benedict Canyon home. As Kennerly slogged toward the house, the mud claimed a shoe. He bought TWO new shoes and put them on on his expense account, $32.95, but New York first balked, until they conceded that you can’t replace just one shoe. (“shooter, Dave Kennerly ) Marty McReynolds learned in 1964 that, meager though it may be, you should keep your salary a secret. He enlisted a young man to help develop and print photos when French President Charles DeGualle visited Quito, Ecuador. Marty tried to change the subject when the fellow asked what UPI paid him, but the guy was so persistent McReynolds finally told him: $174.50 a week, modest by US standards but lavish in Ecuador. Apparently offended, the helper was nowhere to be found when McReynolds reached the rendezvous point with film, so he had to process, print and transmit his own pictures while filing the news report. He never saw the young man again. Today, it’s hard for anybody who didn’t work for UPI to understand the depth of loyalty to the company, photographers and reporters alike. UPI salaries weren’t much to brag about, and UPI photographers were paid less than their AP competitors. Salaries were often far less than those of photographers from metropolitan newspapers working alongside them. Picture bureau managers in key bureaus often earned less than photographers they supervised because their staffers were union members entitled to overtime but as exempt “management” bosses were not. UPI considered managers of “one-man bureaus” to be exempt from union jurisdiction. Even after the National Labor Relations Board ruled otherwise, few managers ever claimed overtime, and the best assignments went to staffers who didn’t watch the clock. The tradeoff was regular national and foreign assignments that many newspaper staffers only dream about. Marty McReynolds flew from New York to Nicaragua for a violent presidential election, and he wrote UPI’s stories and shot and transmitted UPI’s working against three AP staffers on the scene. McReynolds had been trained to use the Muirhead photo transmitter just hours before he left New York. UPI was happy with his one-man show until he turned in 64 hours of overtime for working nonstop and on his days off. He was encouraged to claim 21 hours of straight time; he eventually collected time-and-a-half for 72 1/2 hours. Miami staffer Russ Yoder and I were attacked (and briefly, hospitalized) during 1964 Civic Rights unrest in St. Augustine, Fla., and our personal cameras were stolen. UPI’s treasurer, A.P. Bock, said that the stolen cameras were “used” and balked at buying us new ones, offering Yoder $ 400.92 to cover his loss of more than a thousand dollars. Vice President Frank Tremaine and Southern Division manager Bill Lyon both intervened, explaining to Bock that no UPI photographers would clamor for assignments that risked both their skin and their own camera gear if UPI wasn’t willing to compensate them. UPI paid for new cameras and lenses. (GH letters) “Line” bureaus outside of New York had meager photo-supply budgets. Christmas came early whenever a “line” bureau staffer joined major event coverage -- championship fights, national political nominating conventions, the Olympics, NASA launches. The New York crew always arrived with a cornucopia of new equipment, and seemingly unlimited supplies of factory-loaded 35mm film. Those of us who helped with the story learned to help ourselves to New York’s film, 36-exposure Kodak Tri-X packed in 20-roll “bricks.” We’d draw two “bricks” a day – one for that day’s coverage and a second to haul back to our bureaus. We also learned to help pack up after an event, when everything was labeled for shipment back to New York. We kept our eyes open for boxes containing desirable new enlargers or film dryers, and waited for the opportunity to slap on a new label – ours, sending the equipment to our own bureau – over the one that would have directed the carton to New York. After the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, I put my bureau’s label over New York’s to redirect a Omega B22 enlarger, only to have Bill Lyon, a friend and former boss, put his Atlanta bureau label over mine. Lewis Lord 's still a card-carrying member of THE DOWNHOLD CLUB OF UNITED PRESS. His card was signed by Superintenent of bureaus L.B. "Save a Nickel" Mickel, attesting that the bearer, "being dedicated to the proposition that nothing is so cheap it can't be done cheaper, and not having demanded a new pencil since the last meeting, is a member in good standing “entitled to no special privileges, consideration or credit whatsoever. To this day, an aggregation of UPI news and photo people worldwide who have gone on to other endeavors or have retired stay in touch by internet, where they reminisce about UPI, their experiences, UPI’s pennypinching ways, and sound off on current events. Appropriately, they call their list: downhold.

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